


And All Things Nice

by parcequelle



Category: The Closer
Genre: Cooking Lessons, F/F, First Kiss, Flirting, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 20:31:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7136006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the third week of her questionably successful experiment to teach Brenda how to cook. (Written for the Tumblr prompt, "first kiss.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	And All Things Nice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iblamethenubbins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iblamethenubbins/gifts).



Brenda is standing behind her, impatient, hopping from one foot to the other. “Well?” she demands, “What’s it look like?”

“I’m about to find out, Brenda, just be—”

“I am bein’ patient!”

“I wasn’t—“

“For heaven’s sake, Sharon, what’s the good in botherin’ to cook things for yourself if you have to wait so long for them to actually be ready? I’m surprised you people don’t die of starvation!”

In the interest of taking the chance to smirk at full capacity, Sharon uncurls her body from where she’s standing in front of the oven and turns to face Brenda. “And by ‘you people’ do you mean adults in general or just people whose digestive systems refuse to function on takeout alone?”

“Oh, ha, ha,” Brenda mutters. “I can’t believe those lunatic colleagues of yours actually like you. Are you as mean to them as you are to me?”

“Oh, no,” Sharon says breezily, pulling the oven mitts out of their resting place in the – cutlery drawer? Best not to ask – “I’m much nicer to them. You know what they say, if you have friends in FID you needn’t bother looking for others elsewhere.”

“Ouch.” Brenda winces. “But to be fair, y’all are backstabbin’ monsters out to ruin the lives of good, honest, hardworking cops.”

Gravely, Sharon says, “You see the problem.” She is inordinately pleased when it makes Brenda crack a smile, and hurriedly disguises that fact by taking a long sip of wine.

Brenda is just opening her mouth to say something – what, Sharon won’t ever know – when the slightly rusty timer over the oven starts beeping, and Brenda looks at her, almost theatrically wide-eyed. Sharon reaches over to pat her comfortingly on the arm, slides the mitts on, and goes to open the oven door.

“Oh, Lord,” Brenda moans, “I don’t think I can watch,” and Sharon has to stifle the near-overwhelming urge to laugh.

This is the third week of her questionably successful experiment to teach Brenda how to cook. The first week, she hadn’t dared risking the introduction of electronics into the equation and had, in the interest of health and safety, stuck to salad. This Brenda had found somewhat less than impressive, but she had managed to chop tomatoes and spring onion, boil and slice eggs, and comprehend the standard one-part vinegar to three-parts olive oil dressing that had helped Sharon progressively through college, marriage, her child-rearing years, and more than one awkward dinner party. 

The second week they’d tried soup, an effort that had proven less effective; Sharon’s pretty certain she can still see bits of butternut squash, pureed with a little too much energy and enthusiasm, peppering the ceiling above their heads.

Now, today, with Brenda on her second glass of wine and restless behind her, Sharon takes a moment to pray that this time won’t be such a disaster, then reaches in with both hands to draw out the quiche. When she sees it, she lets out a sharp, relieved breath she immediately hopes Brenda doesn’t hear, because – and she’ll never admit aloud to the surprise she feels at this – it actually looks _good_. The cheese topping might be a little burnt in some places, but it’s cooked, it’s risen, and it looks good. She turns to Brenda and says, matter-of-factly, “It looks good.”

Brenda looks between the quiche and Sharon, Sharon and the quiche, and narrows her eyes. “But?”

Sharon blinks. “But nothing! It just looks good. Honestly. I’ll just check—” Unsurprisingly, the Johnson household isn’t possessed of any skewers, so Sharon just slides a fork into the filling and brandishes it, triumphant, when it comes out clean but for a few crumbs. She can feel that she’s beaming, can feel herself overcome by a sense of pride at this success that she really has no right to feel, but that’s it, she can do nothing; the fact that Brenda is trying so hard not to grin and failing miserably makes it even harder for her to stop.

They are staring at each other across the warm, open space of Brenda’s kitchen, just standing there, and then Brenda bites her lip and looks away; Sharon watches her do it, too, watches the dart of her tongue as she runs it over lips, and she feels her cheeks go hot. She is almost relieved when Brenda interrupts the suddenly-loaded silence to say, “But we shouldn’t count our chickens, should we? Let’s try it before we decide it’s—y’know.”

“Edible?” Sharon suggests. At Brenda’s look, she adds, “Of course you’re right,” rather generously, she thinks.

“Oh, sure, of course I’m right,” Brenda grumbles. “As though you’ve ever agreed with me before.”

Sharon knows better than to rise to that particular bait, so instead she turns, extends the kitchen knife to Brenda like a present, and smiles as pleasantly as she can. “You’ll do the honours, won’t you?”

“Uh, sure,” Brenda says. She sidles up beside Sharon against the counter, stands too close; makes a show of not moving away even where their arms are touching through the material of their shirts. Sharon makes a show of doing the same. _Well_ , she thinks, on a smirk, as she watches Brenda slide the knife around the rim of the tin, _two can play at that game._

Brenda smiles sweetly at her. “Would you please pass me a couple of plates, there, Sharon?”

“Oh, but of course, Brenda.” She makes sure to stretch a little taller when she’s opening the cupboard, to linger with her hip cocked and her spine curved just a little too long, and if the fact that she can no longer hear Brenda moving tells her anything, it’s that those stunts were worthwhile. Brenda shakes the quiche out of the tin with more violence that Sharon would have deemed necessary, but since she gets it upright, presentable, and onto a plate with no injuries, Sharon holds her tongue. She holds her breath, too, as Brenda bends over her creation and cuts two narrow slices, slides them onto the plates. Adds forks.

When she just stands there, staring at it, knife still in hand, Sharon nudges her with a gentle elbow. “So?” she prompts. “Don’t you want to try it?”

Brenda glances at her, her entire face a grimace. “I’ll only know that when I’ve already tried it, won’t I?”

Sharon decides to abandon logic and try for camaraderie instead. “Shall we try it together?” she offers.

“Yes,” Brenda says. “On the count of three. Then if it kills us it’ll look like a murder-suicide instead of just one or the other.” Sharon stares at her, and she shrugs. “Always more interesting for the investigatin’ officer.”

Sharon sniffs. “I will do my best not to take that a personal slight against my teaching skills.”

Brenda looks vaguely apologetic, at that, which is more than Sharon had hoped for, so she raises her plate and holds Brenda’s eyes. Smirks. “Here’s to your very first quiche, then, which I would swear in court is unlikely to be fatal.”

“Hey, what do you mean un—”

“One, two, three—“

They both take a bite, Brenda’s ferocious and Sharon’s more subdued; watch each other as they chew, chew, swallow. Take a simultaneous sip of wine. Then, after a long, tense second, Brenda says, “And? What did you think?”

“Well, I’m still standing,” Sharon says dryly, and then, when Brenda does not appear to appreciate the joke, “I think it’s good. Could use a little more salt, maybe, but it’s good.”

 _You did good,_ she wants to say, suddenly, absurdly, but her tongue won’t allow her to do it. She doesn’t need to, though, because it is this small piece of criticism that is apparently what sells it to Brenda; she smiles at Sharon and says, “Good? Okay. It’s good.”

“But did _you_ like it?”

“Oh, sure,” Brenda says, waving a hand that encompasses the mess of the kitchen counter, “but what do I know?”

“You know your own taste,” Sharon says. “You made this.” She leans in closer, catches Brenda’s eye. “I supervised, sure, but you did it and I’ve tasted the result, so I don’t care what your ex-husband thinks about your cooking skills.”

“Husbands,” Brenda says, but it’s almost absent-minded because she’s staring at Sharon’s mouth. She’s not even hiding it, she’s just staring, blatant. “Ex-husband _s_. Plural.”

“Sorry,” Sharon manages to say. Her mouth, from one moment to the next, is desert-dry, and there seems to be very little oxygen left in the room. “I forgot.” She goes to take another sip of wine and finds her glass empty, sets it on the counter beside her, blood pounding in her ears – God, what is wrong with her? Brenda’s astounding conviction rate presents suddenly less of a mystery; if Sharon feels like this when all Brenda’s done is stare at her lips, then what will she do if Brenda starts to speak?

She doesn’t have to wonder long; in the next moment, Brenda has slid up to her, up into her space, and is looking at her with a calculating expression. “I don’t think you did.”

Sharon has no idea what she’s talking about, no idea of anything. “What?”

“I don’t think you forgot,” Brenda says. It’s more of a purr than a word, and God, Sharon is an adult, she should be able to resist this. “About my ex-husbands.”

She should, but that doesn’t mean she can. “No,” she hears herself confessing, “I didn’t forget.”

Brenda grins like the cat that got the cream, and Sharon’s skin feels hot, hot all over.

“You know I wasn’t telling you to be patient, before?”

It takes Brenda a second to register the change of subject, but then she frowns and asks, “Then what were you sayin’?”

Both of their plates lie abandoned, forgotten, and Brenda is so close now, so warm and just so pretty, her body so open, that Sharon can’t help curling a hand into the collar of Brenda’s hideous pink cardigan, stroking the skin she finds beneath it. Brenda arches into her, eyes never leaving her own, and Sharon does it again, draws a slow circle, then another, then another when Brenda sighs her encouragement. 

“I was just going to tell you to be careful,” Sharon says, voice low. “You were standing right behind me and I didn’t want to hit you when I pulled out the tin.” Brenda is watching her again, a funny, assessing look on her face, and Sharon coughs, lets her hand fall. “I suppose I just wanted you to know that. That I’m not—not like them.” Her cheeks heat anew when she realises what she’s said, the category into which she’s just placed herself, the presumption of it, and— “I’m sorry, Brenda, I didn’t mean – I mean I don’t – I didn’t want to— _oh_.”

This is the point at which Sharon realises that Brenda has successfully backed her into the kitchen counter and is looking at her with fluttering, flirtatious eyes. She waits for Sharon to stop wading through her own mortification before she says, more softly than Sharon would have thought possible, “I know, Sharon. I know you’re not them, and I’m mighty glad about it, let me tell you.” Sharon shakes her head on a laugh, her fingers twining through Brenda’s as though of their own accord. “There’s just one thing I’m a bit disappointed about, though.”

“And what’s that?” she asks, but she already knows.

Brenda grins, lopsided and sweeter than Sharon’s ever seen. “That you didn’t wanna put yourself on a list of my potential suitors, because you’d be more than welcome to do so.”

“’Potential suitors,’” Sharon repeats, not entirely sure if she’s allowed to laugh – Brenda is southern, after all; what if she means it? “Thank you for informing me, Brenda,” she says. “I would also be amenable to your adding yourself to such a list. On my account.”

They stand there, hands linked, Brenda’s lips dark and wet from where she’s been licking them; Sharon just smiles, mildly, and isn’t surprised when Brenda’s the first to break. It takes a good few minutes of staring, of smiling, of building the tension between them to almost unbearable levels, and then Brenda snaps. “Are we really just gonna leave this here or are you gonna kiss me already?”

That’s all the invitation Sharon needs.


End file.
